Mocom2020 is a collaborative think tank about the future of mobile media. After we have published the website mocom2020.com, the future vision video and the book, we now want to share some background information and details with you.

The rise of the “sensorconomy” – a new economy and ecosystem driven by the Internet of Things. Is this M2M on steroids or is it much more than that? Monty expects a wave of new company and business models to cash in one this.

From Andrew Keen\’s rant we move on to a next09 panel on mobile telephony. What will the mobile environment look like in 2020? We begin with a brief video from the open think tank MoCom2020.com, showing where we\’ve come from, and where we may be going (a \’sensorconomy\’ based on digital device sensors, new mobile services and mobile broadband offerings, major takeup in India, Africa, and other developing regions, miniaturisation and embedding of mobile devices, a shift of newspapers from print to mobile delivery, instant translation tools, location tracking, and substantial privacy and security concerns).

According to recent news, the future of books and ebooks will be vook-like, and media tablets will turn books into multimedia, web-linked, social-networking experiences. It all sounds very new, but isn’t this already how people develop content for the web?

Should we worry about books, or should we simply take the web in hand (with the help of mobile tech) and continue to develop web content to its fullest potential?

If we can learn anything at a moment’s notice, wherever we are, while in possession of mobile tech (such as a smartphone), is there any real need to learn something now for future application? That is, with a smartphone, don’t each of us already possess more knowledge than could be expected from any one person, the only difference being that we access it through a device in our hand rather than from memory?

Since Motorola released the first cell phone in the early 1980’s, mobile users, researchers, marketers, advertisers and visionaries extolled the value of mobility in a wireless world.

Mobile user location and distance to other users vanished. More important, psychological distance between users became perceptual—only two inches. “Long distance” morphed to no distance.

Mobile phones and mobile devices un-tethered us from wires and cables. The tin can and string became a fable. Over four billion people on Earth connected 24/7, talking while walking, surrounded by a wireless umbrella. Humans joined a global communications web.

Feature phones and smart-phones added data to voice. The mobile Internet emerged. Information, once hidden to billions, became accessible. A world that never existed to many magically appeared on tiny screens—text, pictures, graphics.

For some, their mobile phones spewed forth music from lands once distant, now local. Camera phones extended vision. GPS and location-based tools re-oriented the carbon footprint, other humans a moving dot on a luminescent screen.

Mobility ceased to exist in a world where everyone was connected. Home, like work, like the park, like the street merged. Carbon footprints moved but mobile users’ minds were static. Like the TV series “Lost,” the island vanished and the ocean’s horizon disappeared.

The Future?

A world where voice and data are one and new, personalized mobile devices extend learning, enhance commerce, entertain.

Mocom2020 is a collaborative think tank about the future of mobile media. After we have published the website mocom2020.com, the future vision video and the book, we now want to share some background information and details with you.

Here is a video with interviews of the team as well as international experts talking about how Mocom2020 and key trends for the future of mobile media.

Please have a look at these 20 questions about the future of Mobile Media and Communication. We reflect our thesis and trends presented in our Future Vision Video and want to get your thoughts and feedback.

The questionaire will just take you a few minutes, but for us it will be big help.
If you take part you have the chance to win one of three Mocom 2020 books.
Thank you for your support.

The goal of our open research project Mocom 2020 is to create and share a vision of the future of mobile media and communication for the next decade. Since the start of the website Mocom2020.com we have published many profound and insightful articles from international experts and advisors.

Thus we want to announce the publication of the book “Mobile Future @mocom2020 – A collaborative vision of the future of Mobile Media and Communication” which we will share with you online as well. Until we publish the whole book including all articles from Mocom2020.com we provide the index and the first few pages already today.